©Frank Galuszka
Wonderful One

©Melissa Gwyn
Rotations, 2006
oil on wood
48" x 20"

©Hanna Hannah
Jenin refugee camp, 2002-06
mixed media on mulberry paper
8’x28"

©Miriam Hitchcock
Debris Pattern, 2005
oil on wood
48" x 36"

©Miriam Hitchcock
View, Interrupted, 2004
oil on wood
48" x 32"

©Don Fritz
Lost and Found

©Don Fritz
Space Cadet

©Susana Terrell
Porch, 2006
oil on canvas
7’x40"x2"

Artists:

Noah Buchanan, Tim Craighead, Don Fritz, Frank Galuszka, Melissa Gwyn, Hanna Hannah, Miriam Hitchcock, Jennie McDade, Susana Terrell

Opening Reception:
Wednesday, April 5, 5:00-7:00PM

Opening on April 5 at the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery is a dynamic group exhibition featuring full and part-time faculty specializing in painting from UCSC's Art Department. This year’s faculty exhibition presents a variety of diverse techniques and approaches, reflecting a wide array of painting styles. It is a wonderful opportunity for both students and the Santa Cruz community to see the current work of UCSC’s visual arts faculty.

Frank Galuszka, Art Department Chair notes, “Painting, as Peter Schejldahl observes, is ‘unbeatable’ as an example of and as a metaphor for, individual consciousness. While painting is periodically declared dead, it re-invents itself continuously through the individuality of every committed practioner. Painting continues to attract a major portion of all students who decide to pursue studies in visual arts. There is a robust history of painting at UCSC including such notable practioners as Patrick Aherne, Eduardo Carrillo, Don Weygandt, Kathryn Metz and Jack Zajac. The wide range of works in this exhibition shows the vitality and diversity of painting as it flourishes today among the faculty and lecturers of the Art Department.”

Faculty Lecture Series
Baskin Seminar Room D101 5:00-6:30p.m.
Wednesday, April 19: Hanna Hannah, Jennie McDade
Thursday, April 20: Miriam Hitchcock, Tim Craighead
Thursday, April 27: Frank Galuszka, Melissa Gwyn
($2.00 at the Performing Arts parking lot)
The exhibition runs April 5 through April 29, with a public reception on Wednesday, April 5 from 5–7pm. The gallery is located at Porter College and admission is free. Parking is easily accessible and free on Saturdays. Images are available upon request.

Gallery hours are Tuesday–Saturday noon to 5:00pm. The gallery is located at Porter College and is wheelchair accessible. Admission is free and parking is free on Saturdays. Parking permits are available weekdays at the main campus entrance kiosk for $5.00/day and $2.00 at the Porter College lot between 5:00–8:30pm for special events. Group tours are available by appointment at (831) 459-3606. For further information and directions please visit our Web site at http://arts.ucsc.edu/sesnon.

Artists:

Noah Buchanan, Lecturer, specializes in drawing & painting; M.F.A., New York Academy of Art.
“My work is based in the academic tradition of the figure, and favors themes of the mythic, symbolic and heroic. I am primarily interested in depicting the human figure as an anatomical event, which houses the spirit of the human condition, and its relationship to the divine.”

Tim Craighead, Lecturer, specializes in drawing & painting; M.F.A., Columbia University.
Although Craighead’s work is often categorized as abstract, he sees it as inhabiting both the objective and the nonobjective worlds. He is attracted equally to an autonomous or non-depictive mark, and the structural forms found in nature and the world of engineering and architecture.  

Don Fritz, Lecturer, specializes in drawing & painting; M.F.A., UC Davis.
“My work has evolved from an early interest in Pop Art and icons of American pop culture expressed through popular imagery and cultural artifacts. I explore the visual symbol for what it represents both literally and metaphorically.”

Frank Galuszka, Professor, specializes in painting; M.F.A., Tyler School of Art, Temple University.
The encrusted surfaces of Galuszka's large abstract mica paintings exert the allure of objects that are both familiar and mysterious. Utilizing the unique properties of mica, these works are reflective as well as transparent, forcing the viewer to plunge deep inside the artwork.

Melissa Gwyn, Assistant Professor, specializes in drawing & painting; M.F.A., Yale University.
In my paintings the organic evolves into artificial, animal into plant and abstraction into decoration. There is an anxiety in these paintings about accelerated growth that is not wholly natural. There is a balance in these paintings that is precarious and tenuous.

Hanna Hannah, Lecturer, specializes in drawing & painting; M.F.A., San Francisco Art Institute.
Hannah combines an eclectic range of visual idioms that often engage media images of disaster in an attempt to translate, through painting, the role of viewer/artist into that of “witness.”

Miriam Hitchcock, Lecturer, specializes in drawing & painting; M.F.A., Yale School of Art.
“I think of my artwork in general as a reverent investigation of the ordinary. These paintings contemplate the imagined trajectory of all that an ordinary life has set into motion and the unresolved nature of what remains when that life is interrupted.”

Jennie McDade, Professor, specializes in drawing & painting; M.F.A., University of Georgia.
Plein air painting is the foundation of my involvement with landscape. The meditation of place that is a part of painting outside, on site, en plein air, expands my understanding of the place and deepens my experience and memory.

Susana Terrell, Lecturer, specializes in drawing & painting; M.F.A., California State University, San Francisco.
For Terrell, the pursuit of painting is a passion for form, color, and sensation, in dialogue with the non-didactic, sensory, and humanistic expression found in certain art historical images.